Tag: Chess.com

Good morning, Campers! Today is National Chess Day in the United States! Established in 1976, the holiday recognizes the benefits of chess to mental and social development as well as it’s links to improved quality of life. Clubs and individuals across the country will be setting up their boards to play the royal game in celebration of its national recognition.

Here are just a few things you can do today to participate:

US Chess Events: A comprehensive list of all US Chess sponsored events throughout the nation.

In Dallas, the Dallas Chess Club is hosting its 2017 National Chess Day FIDE Weekend Open Tournament.

In addition to these events and the myriad of chess activities available on lichess.org, Chess.com and others, I have curated a small playlist of chess videos for you to enjoy on YouTube. Check out the Campfire Chess YouTube Channel for more information.

Blog posts here on Campfire Chess have been quite anemic the past few months due to some things in my personal life that have taken precedence over chess and blogging. I plan to write more about all of it in the future because I believe it will be beneficial to my readers as well as my family and friends. However, for now, I am on vacation with my family and have taken the opportunity to soak up as many rays as I possibly can given that much of my life is spent behind a computer terminal.

With that, I have grown a new addiction over the past few months that has taken up much of my time on this vacation: watching streams on Twitch. Whether its watching Mambo-B destroy the enemy with his skills on Battlefield 1 or Swag_Dracula hunting down campers as Jason Voorhees on Friday The 13th: The Video Game. Yet, these modern masterpieces hide another gem lurking on the Twitch platform: chess!

Although the amount of streamers on Twitch devoted to playing chess is relatively small, I have found that there are usually 1-2 people playing chess online and streaming the video on the network around 75% of the time. Here are some good streams that I have been watching regularly that you might enjoy:

Full Chess Directory on Twitch – Typing chess into the Twitch search box brings up all active broadcasts and accounts.

Chess.com – The web’s largest chess website streams all of its broadcast material through Twitch including some platform exclusive events.

Chess Brah – Very cool blitz games and some instructional content with GMs Eric Hansen, Robin van Kampen, and an eclectic mix of other chess personalities. The name comes from a more contemporary surfer-style way of saying bro…I think.

Campfire Chess has its own Twitch Channel, but it is empty at the moment. One day I hope to start a regular stream when my personal life has stopped fluctuating and returned to somewhat of a sense of normalcy. In the meantime, enjoy the streams above and maybe I will see you in the chatrooms! I am usually on as CampfireChessTV. See you there!

Few chess fans will be as lucky as those living in New York City when the World Chess Championship kicks off later this week, but that doesn’t mean we are entirely removed from following the match and taking in some expert commentary from Grandmasters and fans around the world. The recent victory in Russia over Agon has probably lessened some of the push for more subversive broadcasts and the web will be teeming with opportunities for chess players and fans to follow and comment on the event.

So, how can you view the match?

Chess.com will be hosting the official Agon widget on its site with access to chat functions with full video breakdowns scheduled after each round.

Agon/FIDE, who is currently like the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in terms of its behavior against modern chess, also has an official website where users can view the moves for free, but pay a premium fee for additional analysis and special commentary.

The live match itself will happen in the historic Seaport District with tickets available via Ticketfly.

Remember back in March when Agon, the FIDE puppet company responsible for organizing and managing the World Chess Championship cycle limited the live game broadcasts and infuriated pretty much everyone except their billionaire Russian investors and mafia henchmen? Well, run-on sentences aside, the Agon mafia has returned to show its ugly teeth in the run-up to the World Chess Championship in New York City this November with an announcement that broadcast of the games will be limited to a widget designed to be embedded into an external website to broadcast the games. Peter Doggers at Chess.com breaks the announcement down a little more. When you have finished reading his excellent report, behold the new widget:

Agon’s WCC broadcast widget. (Credit: Chess.com)

According to the official statement,

First, and most importantly, the live moves of the World Chess Championship match will be made available for free to responsible chess websites and other media organizations that take our official broadcast widget.

Although it is presented as the most important part of the broadcast announcement, the idea that the WCC moves should be free is buried in the typical Agon-FIDE hyperbole and legal threats to the chess community and its myriad of online portals. For example,

It is fair to say that the furor that followed divided the global chess community. We were asked, “Does Agon have the right to prohibit anyone from broadcasting the moves as they were made?” We believe that we do and that we have a strong legal position. We also have the full support of the World Chess Federation and many others within the game.

Agon acknowledges that its actions divided a deep and thriving community, but it still fails to see that the divide is between Agon-FIDE and everyone else, not a divide among the chess community. In fact, I don’t believe that I’ve ever witnessed an online community come together en masse like the chess community did when Agon announced its monopoly. With its restrictive broadcasting agreements and tactics aimed at subverting the established ecosystem, Agon has alienated itself from countless people who care about chess and want to see it grow. Furthermore, to assert that its position is legitimized by a FIDE endorsement is no different than saying that its okay to restrict the games because the Kremlin says so. In addition, those within the game that are often quoted by Agon-FIDE couldn’t care less about broadcast rights for chess. Their names are solidified in the annals of chess history and their view is always from the front row…at the board!

What we are doing has never been attempted before in the chess world. It is a revolutionary approach and I am sure we will probably make some mistakes in its implementation before we are finished.

Really? It hasn’t? Do they mean that nobody has ever created a chess widget before to cover broadcasted games? How interesting because Chessbase has one and Chessbomb has one that regularly broadcasts live tournament games. This kind of drivel expounds on how little Agon-FIDE really knows about the depths of ingenuity, innovation, and connectedness that exist in the online chess world.

Suspicious Widget

As a veteran of nearly thirty years of computer and network development, I can say that most competent webmasters are reluctant to arbitrarily add external widgets to their platforms. Companies often gain the trust and respect of their customers by demonstrating commitment to that platform’s service before said platform allows their widget or code to be embedded within their framework. For me, I trust Chessbase and Chessbomb because they have earned trust and respect as reputable companies with a legitimate interest in furthering the game of chess. Agon has done nothing but drive a wedge between the chess community and the organization that is supposed to be championing our game.

Would you trust a Soviet JavaScript or PHP widget on your network or content platform? I sure as hell wouldn’t. Call me paranoid, but the truth is always buried in fine print and revealed in data breaches or midnight special forces raids.

The cycle of life ebbs and flows with some periods being more demanding than others. August to October of this year has been particularly demanding, which forced me to cut down on my chess writing and playing. Curiously, that break preceded a jump in my online game successes both in live challenges and on the damnable Chess.com Tactics Trainer. My online ELO currently sits at 1101, which is the first time it has surpassed that benchmark since March 13 of this year.

Pretty charts, but still a long way to go. (Credit: Chess.com/Campfire Chess)

Of course, some of my recent wins were clearly undeserved (abandoned by opponent, etc.) but I believe that many of them are starting to reflect my constant dedication to studying and learning about the game. For example,

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Winning and losing in chess is like the tides, so I am trying to prepare myself mentally for the time when the wins don’t come and the only way ahead seems to be down, like this heartbreaking loss:

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Many chess players and learners have moved their games into the cloud via Chessbase, Chess.com‘s servers, or the myriad of other iOS and Android apps available for tracking and analyzing a player’s repertoire. For me, this often involves playing on Chess.com on my iPhone or using Stockfish to store and analyze games on the go when I am away from my laptop or ability to access my Chessbase database. Yet, the steady transition of chess players to cloud systems over the years has not entirely eliminated a nostalgic piece of chess history: the computer chess board.

An interesting memory of chess I have as a kid is playing against a computerized board that belonged to my dad. I remember that it had a small LCD display, some red LEDs along the side to indicate the current move, and came with an annoying voice assistant that was always ready to pounce on your emotions once it had destroyed your chess game. The hauntingly annoying words of that board are forever engrained into my psyche: “Hi, my name is Chester! How about a nice game of chess?”

The IQ Toys Voice Master electronic chess board.

As time progressed, many of these boards were relegated to discount bins at bargain stores or the miscellaneous aisles at Goodwill locations. However, I came across a computerized chess board for sale at a Toys-R-Us here in San Antonio a few weeks ago and the item piqued my interest. Was there still a market for these things? And, if there was…what kind of other boards were available out there? A quick Amazon search revealed a mixture of the same problems faced by manufacturers of other niche products: a collection of worthless products with 1-2 star ratings intermixed with legitimate boards.

I spent the next few days researching options and finally decided on a mid-range board from a company called IQ Toys. My Voice Master electronic chess set came a few days later and I thought that now was an appropriate time to write a review given that I have had about a week to play with it. So, here is what its like to use a classic digital chess board in the age of the chess cloud…

Voice Master pieces are of high-quality construction.

Construction and Presentation

Given the plethora of cheap chess sets out there, it is important for a product to present a pleasing aesthetic. This little board was well packaged and it was immediately apparent that it was of a high quality construction. The box included the board itself, a set of white pieces, a set of black pieces, and a complete set of disks for checkers. I could go off on another tangent about the constant bundling of chess and checkers pieces together, but I digress. I tossed the checkers disks into the garbage and unpacked the small, magnetic chess pieces. The board itself does not come with a way to plug it into the wall, so it requires 4 AA batteries. Fortunately, so do many other toys I have purchased for my kids, so after loading the batteries and setting up the pieces, I clicked on the power and set to starting my first digital chess board game since the traumatic days of Chester…

Voice Master size comparison to 12″ MacBook.

Game Play and Observations

It was very straight forward and easy to get a new game started. Without wanting to adjust the options such as game strength or piece odds, two clicks on the key pad and I was underway. I quickly realized that it was going to take some getting used to how the pieces interfaced with the board so that I would not be inundated with a particularly annoying buzzer when it encounters an error. The player gently presses the piece down on the board and follows the instructions on the LCD board. After a few times of having the buzzer scare my dog and receiving more than enough interesting looks from my wife, I muted the board sounds and continue on. As with most chess computers it did not take long for me to hang a piece and lose the first of many casual games against the device.

I have yet to beat this board, which is nothing new for me and is nothing that I did not expect. However, I was curious to get an idea of how strong the board is on a normal setting. I felt as though I was playing against a 1500-1600 ELO player and decided that the best way to compliment any kind of review of the product would be to put it into an engine match against Stockfish. I fired up my Fritz 14 GUI and launched a new game against Stockfish with White and me manually inputting moves for Black on behalf of the Voice Master board. Although there were some moves made by the Voice Master board that warranted a ?? or similar marking, I avoided annotations in the game unless the board itself provided some form of text alert.

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As I expected, Stockfish made short work of the Voice Master board although I was shocked at some of the moves and warnings offered by the board as the game approached its brutal conclusion. Specifically, move 21.Rxg7+ was flagged by the board as requiring caution. When the board asked me if I was sure that I wanted to proceed with that move, Stockfish’s analysis of the move bringing it to within (#8) with 21…Kxg7 22.Qg4+… at this point was more than enough for me to chuckle at the device’s overconfidence. The same thing occurred two moves later after 23.Rh7!! with the board asking if I was sure I wanted to proceed. Needless to say that the board lost shortly thereafter.

One interesting point of the game above is that the board seemed to completely ignore Stockfish’s attach after 21.Rxg7+ and go its own way. Very little was done to counter the coming assault although the board continued to offer coaching advice and precautionary alerts despite Stockfish having it at a #4 disadvantage.

Overall Verdict

The construction, appearance, and usability of the Voice Master board is nice. It does not have the cheap appearance or feeling that comes with many electronic boards sold in stores or online today. Learning the proper level of pressure to apply to the pieces during gameplay can take some practice and I highly recommend turning off the board sounds until you have a firm grasp on that pressure. Otherwise, a player can expect to be inundated with the horrific error buzzer mentioned above.

As for playing strength, the board seems perfect for beginners to mid-range skill players. It offers a classical tactile chess experience without the need to hunt down a physical opponent. However, it might be too little of a reliable challenge for some players as demonstrated in the demo game where it ignored the final mating combination almost entirely. The board retails for $39.99 on Amazon.com (as opposed to $99.99 on sites like ChessUSA.com), which makes it a nice gift for your favorite chess lover or child looking to get started playing the game. At least it does not have the taunting voice of the dreaded Chester set I mentioned in the beginning.

It seems like such a short time ago when chess headlines were adorned with stories of the Tromsø Chess Olympiad in 2014 where visa challenges, bathrooms, and high food prices were among the hottest topics leading up to China’s triumphant victory in the event. But here we are looking down the barrels of the 2016 Chess Olympiad in Baku, Azerbaijan, the home country of former World Champion Garry Kasparov.

After a breathtaking opening ceremony on Thursday, main tournament play began Friday with my beloved United States team winning all 4 of their first matches against players from Andorra. Hikaru Nakamura, Wesley So, Sam Shankland, and Ray Robson each scored well-earned victory against their opponents to launch the team off to a powerful start in the Olympiad.

US Champion Fabiano Caruana is leading the US Olympiad Team

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In the second round, Sam Shankland was the only member of the United States team to not earn a win in the round against Scotland. Caruana, Nakamura, and Robson all earned wins and although it is still early in the event, I would say that the United States team is going to be a team to watch throughout the tournament!

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The National Gymnastics Arena – the Baku Olympiad venue.

This year’s Olympiad is being held in the National Gymnastics Arena in Baku, Azerbaijan. The country has increasingly positioned itself throughout the past few years as a place of intense international sport and competition. Known to the chess community as the birth home of Garry Kasparov, the 42d Chess Olympiad’s host nation continues to impress both players and fans alike.

Although you’ll be hard-pressed to find many pastors (or people) out there who would admit that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is their favorite film of all time, I am not your typical pastor nor do I like to think of myself as your typical person. When it comes to chess, there is much evidence to support the position that I might be the world’s worst chess player. I have become accustomed to losing just in some of the most interesting and depressing ways over the past few years and I thought I have learned to deal with the trauma that can arise from such an experience, but last Wednesday’s tournament OTB game reminded me of how devastating it can be to make a mistake in a game where I put so much time, effort, energy, and focus. In essence, Wednesday night was an opportunity for me to experience my own Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

As many of you know, I have been playing in my first series of OTB tournaments a few months back, but had to take a break to finish some school and other personal projects. These projects also contributed to the lack of posts here on Campfire Chess, but I digress. Playing in the July edition of this tournament was a last-minute decision, so there was a little bit of hesitation on my part for returning. However, I know that the best way to improve is to continue to play. Unfortunately, my return to OTB play was the stuff of nightmares. Rarely do I go into these situations expecting a win because very few of the players involved in these tournaments are rated anywhere near where I perform. Most of them are the master level or higher including a resident International Master and occasional visits from Grandmasters, which I have written about in the past. However, I can say that I never expected what happened this past Wednesday night. To say that it was traumatic betrays the depth of the experience.

I lost a game in eight moves although I played through to 12 moves for a combined total board time of around 14 minutes. Looking back on things, I realized that it was a simple mistake that ended the game so quickly whether it was rushing or simply not surveying the more properly. It has taken me a few days to get over it, but I have written some commentary on this atrocious game and decided to share it with my Campfire Chess audience. Now, for your viewing pleasure I present to you around one of MHCC July 2016.

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Unfortunately, my desire to try again this week has been postponed because of a sick child. As always, family comes first. Therefore, I will have to wait until next week for an opportunity to redeem myself with a reasonable loss.

I never imagined when I wrote The Sad State of Chess on Mac in January of last year that it would become one of the most popular articles in the blog’s history. I wrote the entry in response to my personal frustrations with trying to run Chessbase and other database software on my MacBook. I have heard rumors that Chessbase offered an OS X version of its database software, but the demand was not capable of sustaining the product. Of course, Chessbase is not the only chess database software out there. ChessOK also offers a program called Chess Assistant, but it is also confined to the Windows environment. Much of that article was done through basic research into Mac chess software, so I thought it was appropriate at this point to re-examine the state of chess on the OS X environment and see if anything has changed, if I have learned some new tricks to share, and theorize what the future might hold.

New OS Every Year

Apple shook up the software world a few years ago by pledging to maintain an annual upgrade cycle of its OS X software, which I believe made it the world’s first proprietary operating system to be offered for free. As mentioned on the linked Cult of Mac article, a yearly upgrade cycle created some initial havoc and has been a sore spot for some developers. Yearly upgrade cycles almost guarantee a need for developers to review and update their software on the same cycle, which might not be economical or practical for operations like Chessbase or ChessOK. The Sad State of Chess on Mac was written during the Age of OS X Yosemite while this article was written on and in the Age of OS X El Capitan. Despite the anxiety and challenges created by the annual upgrade cycle, it has strengthened the core of the OS by ensuring that the software the completes the Mac experience remains a forethought of its creators and is as secure as possible.

Native OS X Applications

Unfortunately, it seems as though no new applications have emerged (that I can find) that can fill the category of native chess applications for OS X. Of those applications that are still out there, only one of them has been consistently updated and improved.

The despicable OS X Chess application remains a mainstay within the OS’s default offerings. It is a casual chess program that I advise against using unless it is the last chess program on earth. Try a free account on one of the major chess websites before using that program.

XBoard is a port of the popular Winboard application and can be used with any UCI engine. Like many open source programs, it could benefit from some aesthetic care, but it functions well and is great for a casual game or facing an engine head-on.

Shredder Chess for Mac was reviewed in the original Sad State article and nothing has changed since then. It remains at version 12 and the iOS app has not seen a significant update in quite a while either.

HiARCS Chess Explorer in OS X Yosemite (Credit: Campfire Chess)

HiARCS Chess Explorer as emerged in recent years as a force to be reckoned with in the world of digital chess. As I wrote about in Sad State, HiARCS contains the best native chess interface of any program on OS X. This is true today just as it was over a year ago. The HiARCS team has consistently delivered updates to the software to make it more stable and to take advantage of new technologies that improve the efficiency of the engine. I only wish that it could open and manage Chessbase files.

Virtual Machines and Virtualization

Virtualization technology has come a long way in recent years. What was once a clunky, frustrating, and resource-hogging effort can be done on a Mac with little effort and even less money. First, we will start with the free stuff.

VirtualBox began in 2007 as a project published by German software firm Innotek before being acquired by Sun Microsystems in 2008 and Oracle in 2010. VirtualBox is free for Windows, OS X and Linux. For chess users, it will allow them to run a legitimate copy of Microsoft Windows in a virtual machine on OS X, which in-turn allows you to run the myriad of Windows chess applications like Chessbase and Chess Assistant.

Parallels is a popular commercial virtualization system that I had not used when I wrote Sad State. Since then, Parallels has been my go-to virtualization program for running chess applications on OS X. My favorite part of using it is that it does not require a user to function exclusively within a Windows or other operating system environment. Coherence mode enables the software to hide the Windows desktop and give the appearance of running the application natively in OS X. In my opinion, this is the best option for Mac users looking to balance usability, security, and stability.

MacBook Air Running Windows 10 in Parallels (Credit: Paul Thurrott)

Wine Bottlers are virtualization wrappers that enable a Windows application to run in OS X by building a pseudo-native application that contains bare essentials to run the program and the executable file itself. This gives the appearance of creating a native OS X application through the use of wrapper technology.

Wine technology works for many Windows-based applications, but there are some drawbacks. The application wrappers are considerably large and not all windows applications are compatible. Chessbase Reader is compatible with Wine and will run, but is highly unstable. Chessbase will not install under any iteration of Wine that I have found, which includes Crossover by Codeweavers.

Tarrasch Chess GUI is a lightweight program that is designed exclusively for chess study and analysis. It runs very well under a Wine wrapper, although the program goes quickly from a meager 4.5MB download to almost 100MB in size once the dependencies are installed in the wrapper. Performance wise, this is a good option for chess study, but the size of the Wine installation is somewhat of a turnoff.

ChessOK Aquarium also runs decently under Wine, but can be unstable and clunky. It does not help that this program’s interface is sorely outdated, but the responsiveness of the interface is affected significantly when ran inside a Wine wrapper.

ChessOK Aquarium in Windows 10 (Credit: Campfire Chess)

Chess in the Cloud

It is safe to say that chess led the cloud revolution. Chess players were competing and sharing their games with each other on the internet long before people were finding ways to replicate the display of Word Documents and share videos across the globe. Before the IT world adopted the term cloud computing, the chess community was already there. Major advancements in web technology including JavaScript, PHP, HTML5 and others have enabled the chess community to take cloud chess to the next level. In my opinion, it could be that the best chess programs for OS X and soon to be for Windows might be accessed in the same program we used to relentlessly check Facebook and Twitter…the browser.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am not paid or supported in any way by Chess.com, but it is my drug of choice when it comes to online chess. Having tried a few other online options I have found that it is the best environment for me to explore, analyze, and learn. Over the last few years, Chess.com has added a myriad of tools and resources to its arsenal that essentially make it one of the most powerful online chess services in the world, rivaled only by the King of Digital Chess, Chessbase. Although free live chess at almost any time control imaginable is Chess.com’s major selling point, there are other tools on the site that make it a powerful research and analysis tool.

The full-featured analysis board enables a player to input moves and have them analyzed by the server in addition to supporting game comments and exporting to PGN files.

The games explorer allows you to search through countless master-level games by moving pieces on the board. Great for visual learners and is an excellent companion to the site’s opening reference tool.

Chessbase has been around almost forever. What started out as a project to help Garry Kasparov take advantage of emerging technology has turned into a vital resource for chess players around the world. Recently, Chessbase took its massive library and resources to a new level by moving to the cloud and creating the Chessbase Account program. The power of Chessbase is now accessible through a web browser to provide opening references, analysis, commentary, and many of the other features found in the full version of Chessbase.

My favorite part of the Chessbase Account program is the massive online database. Written largely in JavaScript, the interface is highly familiar to anyone who has used Chessbase throughout the years. The database allows the user full access to Chessbase’s massive game archives and allows the user to annotate their own games using uploaded PGN files or games played online.

On a side note, I know this feature exists and is highly emphasized, but I have never been successful with uploading a PGN file to the Chessbase Account program. Any PGN file with more than 1-2 games in it simply refuses to load in any browser I have tried. If you have a suggestion on how to fix this problem, PM me on Twitter @CampfireChess or email admin@campfirechess.com to share your secret.

Chessbase Account also includes the venerable Fritz chess engine online for users to challenge.

The Chessbase Account Openings Trainer is second to none. It functions much like the openings explorer on Chess.com but includes the raw computing power of the Chessbase servers in Germany and cross-references with the online live book and games archive.

Chessbase Cloud Database (Credit: Campfire Chess)

If I were to evaluate each of the online chess services out there, this post would end at around 50,000 words and 300 pages of text. Since I have crossed the 2000 word mark and to avoid losing my audience, I am going to simply offer a list of other websites that offer the same services although most of them are new or have chosen to specialize in areas of chess that do not have the comprehensive offerings of Chess.com and Chessbase.

Chess24: Offers free online live chess, streaming tournament coverage, and Grandmaster lessons for premium members. Chess24 has a special place in my heart for being one of a few websites to defy the Agon directive for the 2016 Candidates Tournament in Moscow. It is also home to my two chess crushes: Anna Rudolf and Sopiko Guramishvili.

The Internet Chess Club is one of the oldest chess servers in the world. I have a premium membership there, but plan to let it lapse. It offers many of the same options as Chess.com although through an inferior interface.

LiChess.org is another online chess server that offers free live games and some reference material.

Final Verdict – And Moving Ahead

Chess.com and Chessbase Account both have countless video lessons, puzzles, and tactics available for premium members to access. I believe that these options, combined with the specifics I mentioned previously clearly show that the future of chess databases is in the cloud. With migration to the cloud, I predict that the need for native Windows and OS X applications to manage personal databases will diminish in the coming years. Will everyone be able to access and use these applications? Certainly not, which is why I hope that Chessbase and other software developers will continue to offer native applications to support those people who might not have access to high speed internet connections or prefer to take their collections with them to remote locations. I know that my Carnival Cruise in April of 2015 was fantastic because of my Chessbase collection on my tablet that removed any desire to connect to the internet.

I think that the opportunity for chess programs to make leaps and bounds into the OS X community has come and gone. Open Source alternatives that were mentioned in the original Sad State are still around, but they depend exclusively on volunteers who are passionate about their projects and about chess. When that passion runs dry or other demands take precedent, the project often suffers from lack of updates or cancellation. Instead, the future of chess on OS X is already here…in the cloud. I am happy to embrace the new paradigm because cloud-based chess programs increase the availability of chess knowledge by reducing the overhead for creating software on different platforms. The future is bright, but no shades required.

I did a small exposé in September of 2014 on Phiona Mutesi and her incredible rise in the professional chess world. At the time, it was rumored that Disney had acquired the rights to Tim Crothers’ book The Queen of Katwe, which is based on Phiona’s life in Kampala, Uganda and her rise to play in the 2010 and 2014 Chess Olympiads. Now, Disney has released the official trailer for The Queen of Katwe and has set its release date for September 23, 2016.

Initial reaction to the trailer has been positive and it looks like Disney has managed to capture the essence of Phiona’s story, which is triumph over the worst of life’s circumstances. Fortunately, this is a theme that Disney has great experience with. Hopefully the film will get screen time here in San Antonio so I can deliver a proper review at its time of release. Until then, enjoy the trailer above, check out the article on Chess.com, and visit the official Facebook page for the film.

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About the Editor

Wesley Surber is an amateur chess player and avid fan of the game who lives in San Antonio, Texas. He began writing about chess in 2014 and has since explored the game from a multitude of analytical viewpoints. In his spare time he is a father of two beautiful girls, an ordained minister, a baseball, horror movie, and industrial music fanatic. You can usually find him online playing on lichess.